One Unscarred Place
by Skeren Dreamera
Summary: The village, like any living thing, had scars from the battles that had been fought across her surface. But, just as there are scars, there are also those places that people simply stopped looking at for one reason or another. This is a story about one of those, because eventually, the conscious choice to not look will be thwarted, whether someone intends to or not.


**One Unscarred Place**

The house was old, almost delicate in its disrepair, but there was really little that could be done for it. It wasn't, after all, the only building in Konoha like this. In fact, there had been a time when there were many more buildings in this state, when whole chunks of the village weren't brand new and matching, but rich and off color from one another in a natural sprawl.

Sometimes, it was hard to remember what that Konoha had been like.

The village had suffered, as had her people, and the scars were permanent, left in the shape of buildings that didn't quite fit and people who were no longer there. The ones who remained were, in many ways, just as scarred as the village grounds, and yet somehow, between the wars and the destruction, this building had survived.

It felt almost like a mockery that it had, as though it was declaring that it would be there long after its shinobi stopped coming home. They almost had. He was the last of his line, and had been for a very long time. Somehow, he had the feeling that people tended to simply _forget_ that he'd had a clan too, once, because there had never been a great many of them, and never in his lifetime, but this building was not built for a small family.

This building was built for a small clan, for a family to grow up and out and with land that went unused that was clearly intended for _more._

Somehow, that more had never happened, and instead of growing, the clan had dwindled, and shrunk, until suddenly, there wasn't a clan, or even a family. There was merely, at this point, the individual. One man who had been alone since the age of eight because of things that he had been too young to contest, no matter his rank and abilities. A child was never meant to have to save their parent, was never meant to have to _know_ what it was to know they'd failed a test they ought not have been taking.

He was willing to admit he still hadn't forgiven his father for that. It was part of why this house stood empty for so long, had been avoided clean through the times when housing was harder to come by because so much had been destroyed. It had been hidden among the trees to the side of the monument, out of sight and overgrown enough to be at least slightly undesirable even to those who had spotted it in the chaos.

But now, it was time to do something with this place. Naruto liked to prod at him, at times, to ask him things that his remaining teammate wouldn't dare and that the new ones were, even now, too reluctant to attempt. Well, that Tenzo was too reluctant to attempt. Sai, unfortunately, even after years of being around the rest of them, hadn't quite come to understand what tact was. That, or he'd decided that he enjoyed the reactions his lack of tact got him. At times it was hard to decide which answer was more likely, though at least the young man seemed to grasp what topics were best left alone.

One of these topics happened to be anything to do with his family. Naruto, on the other hand, refused to allow him this particular boundary once all was said and done, and that had eventually led to this, with him standing outside the overgrown archway which had once been uncovered by the no longer tamed nightshade plants. Something in the very back of his mind let him know that coming back here would have been excellent practice in useful plant identification when he'd still had genin to teach.

It was a thought easily quashed, and he slowly, carefully, picked his way into the overgrown yard, gaze wandering from point to point as he circled the grounds, spiraling inward toward the whitewashed and weather torn building that stood proud and old down the path. So much had changed of the plants, turning from something somewhat tamed to something wild and far more beautiful. At least, to him this was much more beautiful, wiping away what had once been stark control over the surroundings and leaving what he felt should have perhaps been there from the beginning.

It might have reminded him things weren't meant to be rigidly controlled when he'd still drifted to the edges of this land to look as a boy, on those days when his sensei had still been alive to pull him away and take him back to where he'd lived at the time. Sensei, at least, had been a perceptive man, refusing the eight year old the option of living alone after what he'd seen, but at the time it had done no good. No, he'd wasted _years_ because of that horrible day, and he still regretted it.

How much would have changed if any one moment of that day had been _better_? If he hadn't found his father? If he'd come home before his father could hurt himself? Or, conversely, if his father had chosen the mission over his teammates? The man he was now was horrified at the very idea, but the child he was then wouldn't have known better. No, that child was always happy simply to have his father home.

That's what it came down to, essentially. When he was eight years old, his childhood ended because his father had ended. His Sensei tried, he tried so very hard, to make that childhood continue, but it was a lost cause. It was with this thought that his spiral brought him close enough to touch the building, and he carefully padded the last distance back to the porch, light feet taking him up the time weakened steps.

He finally stopped moving at the door, staring at it intently in sharp focus for such long moments. It was something Naruto had said that had brought him here, a simple wistful murmur that he wasn't sure he was even intended to catch. He was sure it had been in reply to something one of the others had said, but the fact Naruto hadn't made himself heard to the rest told him that the question or statement that spurred it hadn't been the important part, not really, and thus had slipped away from him as an unneeded point to remember. Instead, it was what Naruto had wanted no one to hear that had made him pause, and had reminded him that _he could do that_.

"_It would be so awesome to have a house like that, then none of us would ever have to be alone anymore."_

He knew for a fact that not one of his regular teammates had anything even approaching a house. Not even Sakura had that particular joy, having left her parents behind years before, and she rounded out the array of locations that covered the majority of the village between them. He, however, did have a house.

He hadn't lived there in two decades, true, but he _had_ a house, and that was why he was here now. He intended, with this visit, to see if he'd be able to offer Naruto his unintentionally spoken wish, to see if he could stand living here or offering to allow others to come and go as they pleased.

If the answer was yes, then perhaps this house wouldn't become another of Konoha's scars.

Still, that didn't stop the past from creeping up on him. He was, after all, Hatake Kakashi, and he had always had the tendency to dwell on the past perhaps a bit too much. This once though, he hoped that it didn't, because this time, he was looking to the future, and he sincerely wanted to know what that felt like.

Even if, on this occasion, that meant rather literally roaming the past first.

And maybe, just maybe, planning a bit of that future while he did.


End file.
